


A world for the seeking

by redsnake05



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-25
Updated: 2010-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 19:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/pseuds/redsnake05
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life of a star is all in the fixed dance they tread in the sky and on earth. The life of a daughter is in duty and endless labels and days. Citlali finds a new purpose when the <i>Dawn Treader</i> comes to land, and remembers things she has long wanted and thought of. She's willing to take things that are less than perfect to escape a life even less palatable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A world for the seeking

**Author's Note:**

> I chose the name Citlali for Ramandu's daughter. She is never given a name in canon, despite appearing in two books.

She wasn't used to speaking. Her tongue had never gotten much practice, not even when she had been young, and the words she had learned to speak in isolation did not fall naturally from her lips. Still, she greeted the travellers as she picked them out from the chill night sky with her lamp. They responded, so perhaps her words were not so strangely shaped as they felt in her mouth. She wondered for a moment if the words would become more familiar, if she might have a chance to practice them and let them warm up in her throat until they felt softer. Then her father came, and the sky brightened, and she prepared for her duty as she did every morning. The words of the music seemed more natural in her mouth, on her tongue. She felt herself as a creature of ritual, and, for a moment, of performance. She pushed it aside. It was her duty.

The girl, Lucy, never stopped speaking as she followed from the clearing and down to the door set into the hillside. It sounded a little like the babble of a brook or the chatter of birds. She couldn't listen so fast either.

"Um," said Lucy, stopping just before the door. "Maybe I wasn't listening, but I didn't hear your name. What should I call you?" She looked nervous, more like a girl and less like a queen than she had seemed in the dark.

"Citlali," she replied. The word sounded even more unfamiliar in her mouth, like a tangle of feathers, hot and laden with the sun. She'd taken a moment to think of it, remember it. It had been long years since she had heard it spoken. One of her duties was to maintain the labels and order of the place, to differentiate the types and varieties and keep them sorted and separated into clean divisions, artificial and falsely smooth. She was labelled by the things she did, not who she was.

Lucy looked at her with a smile; Citlali wondered at the openness of her face and the way her expression reflected a sense that life was there to delight her. She felt her own lips curl upwards for just an instant before she looked away and pushed open the door.

"That's a beautiful name," said Lucy. She followed behind, exclaiming over each thing she encountered like it was new and special. Perhaps it was, to her. Citlali had no experience of life outside this land. She'd never even been over the hills, never to see what was held on the other side. She looked at Lucy and wondered about her life. She would ask, if she could find the words, but then Lucy was speaking of the _Dawn Treader_ and the slap of salt in her face, the wind in her hair. It sounded wild and free, and very far from Citlali's small room with its tiny window looking out onto the clearing with the table. It seemed small and stifled, a narrow piece of land in a wide world. She felt restless, like she had not done for many years.

"You have travelled much?" she asked. She wanted to hear more of these tales, more of the span of adventure that Lucy has seen. To admit openly to wanting that was disloyal, but Citlali could not deny that she had wondered many times about lives outside her own.

Lucy launched into a fuller explanation, speaking of the old, old days of Narnia. Citlali could remember those days, though she'd been here and only heard about them in tales. She had been young then, and her father older than he was now. She could remember the day that the knife had come to them, to rest here on the table in the light of the morning sun. Her heart beat faster as Lucy spoke of seeing it used, of the cold of the night and the mice, and Aslan's poor bare face. Citlali had little to add. The knife had come here. It had stayed. No one touched it. She worked.

"It must be exciting," said Lucy, "to be a star's daughter." She sounded envious and Citlali began to laugh. It felt hideous, her lips moving around a bray of noise that could not sound remotely happy.

"No," she said. "That is what I do."

Lucy looked at her and said no more for a moment. Her fingers fluttered around her for a moment like butterflies in the morning, but then she smiled and changed the subject with another story about Narnia. Citlali could hear the freedom in her voice, as wild as the sea. Citlali listened and let the words take up residence inside her. This was a new truth, as broad as the sky.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Citlali had never asked about how she came to be here. It was so long ago. Sometimes, when she thought about it, she would see herself as solemn and resigned. Other times, she thought she remembered joy and a thirst for adventure and knowledge. That was all past now. She sat on the windowsill in her tiny room and looked down at the sleepers at the table. Seven years ago seemed no time at all. She wondered if she'd lived to long, but she thought of all the world that she had not yet seen, and knew she'd not lived at all.

Earlier that night, there had been the loud buzz of voices and a press of people around the table. It had overwhelmed her for a moment. She'd known that her father's eyes were on her, so she'd stiffened her spine and looked all the more interested in Caspian's tales of Narnia and what he was doing with the land. Caspian had looked at her like she was unobtainable, desirable, and she wondered if this was a way of escape. The restlessness in her grew ever more impatient with each hour in the travellers' company. She would not listen to the call of her duty.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Citlali put down the ledger she was holding and reached for her magnifying glass again. Sea glass, dull green and pitted, sat on the table in front of her. It had come to her in a jumble of shells filled with the hiss of waves. She looked again at the formless lump, seeing underneath the shape that it wanted to be. There was a name for it, a comfortable collection of facets that she could bring into being, and then it would be done. It would take its true form on one of the shelves here. Sometimes, it hurt to coax out the shape that was lurking inside each find, just to put it on a shelf in the dark. She wasn't sure that it wasn't better to remain free and basking in sun and under stars. Surely it could not hurt that much, compared to confinement in a darkened room, one more exquisite shape on yet another shelf.

She held the glass in her hand and sang, quietly at first. Sun diffracted randomly off the uneven surface for long moments before her voice grew. Slivers tumbled off, spilling from her hand like ground confetti. Her voice strengthened as the shape became more defined in her mind and the glass piece hummed with it. She did not know how long she sang for, but when she lowered her hand, the glass was green and proudly polished. Crenelations marched around the topmost tower, the walls were straight and true. Picking up her magnifying glass, she looked inside to see tiny rooms with tiny beds and tiny curtains, caught in a billow of hard silica. Her smile felt more natural, the words for describing, not just naming, coming easier to her lips.

"You will lose that power," said Ramandu, behind her. She turned, hand closing over the glass castle in her hand. She tilted her head and waited for him to continue. He had all the words and she was merely voice. "Leaving will strip you of it, daughter."

Citlali thought of all the things she had taken and shaped, then labelled and stuffed away into shadow. She thought of how she'd been pushed aside too, voiceless and bound by duty as surely as the objects she made were weighted with dust. She had fought against it once, but there had been nowhere for her to go. Now she had a chance at a wider world.

"I know," she said. Her words felt cleaner in her throat. "It's a choice I am willing to make."

"I wish you to stay," Ramandu said.

She shrugged and opened her fingers again. The castle rested there, freed from blankness with her voice. She would lose this power, and gain uncertainty.

"It is my choice," she said. He bowed his head and she wished she felt something more for him than a fading memory of long-ago days when he had taught her all the nuances of her duty. Now she was shedding it, and it was exhilarating and frightening both. She had no time for him. She was impatient to leave.

"You will find it nothing like you expect," he said. She could not tell if his caution came from regard for her or just his ingrained hatred of change, his reliance on order and duty. It was infathomable to him that she may wish something other than the life that had been prescribed for her.

"Disappointment is not something I fear," she said. It could not be worse than being stifled. She could not explain her desire to leave; she remembered the way Lucy had told of the waves and the wide sky, and she thought of Caspian and the way he'd pressed her hand yesterday. She could leave. There were things to see and do, and she could be someone, not just a collection of tasks to follow.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Citlali walked down to the water's edge beside Lucy. They were leaving to go to the edge of the world. She would wait, just a little longer, and put her ordered affairs into rest. Ramandu remained behind. She did not care for his disapproval; she would be leaving it soon enough. The set patterns of his thinking, of his movements and patterns and spells, all these she was overturning. She felt young again. Lucy smiled up at her as they walked, but she did not speak this morning.

The boat waited for them and Citlali wished them all a stately goodbye. She turned to Lucy last, taking her hand and bending her head to speak quietly in her ear.

"You bought me adventure," she said.

"I hope you find it," said Lucy. She looked a little troubled, but Citlali was unconcerned. She had made her choice; she knew that what lay ahead was freedom and uncertainty both, and she wanted it. Staying here would bring nothing but further stagnation. Better to take the chance Caspian was offering her, regardless of his motives. It's not like her own were above reproach.

"This is for you." She pressed the little castle into Lucy's hand, closing Lucy's fingers over the turrets and walls, wrapping her own fingers over it.

"Thank you," said Lucy. "I wish I had something to give you."

"You have given me gifts already," said Citlali. Her words came easily now. It was natural to find the shape of a thought inside words. She smiled. "You have no idea."

She bent closer and brushed her lips over Lucy's forehead before stepping back. Lucy moved back, fingers still closed over the figure, face still oddly creased. Caspian stepped forward and claimed Citlali's attention. He bent over her hand.

"Lady, I hope to speak to you again when I have broken the enchantments," he said.

Citlali smiled. It felt natural. She wasn't sure what would come when she stepped aboard that boat herself. She wasn't sure what was over the sea, what she would see and hear, what she would be. The possibilities tasted like salt air and freedom.


End file.
